Talk:Nuclear Fission
QUESTIONS EVERYONE HAS ABOUT NUCLEAR FISSION OR ANY OF THE RELATED CONCEPTS 1. when does nuclear fission occur? Nuclear fission, as discussed on this wikipage, occurs spontaneously and is called radioactive decay, or artificially by humans shooting neutrons at heavy nuclei. 2.If neutrons have radii of about 1*10^-16 meters, how is it possible for human instruments to target them at an atom's nucleus, which is also inconceivably tiny? It seems like this degree of accuracy would be impossible to acheive even if the neutron were thousands of times larger and more controllable. Scientists and physicists use machines called cyclotrons to shoot "neutron bullets" at the nuclei of heavy atoms. These bullets are shot with amazing accuracy at a large amount of atoms-the idea of fission is to produce a lot of energy, and to beam neutrons at a single atom is highly impractical. However, you pose a very interesting question. 3.How is nuclear fission applied to today's modern society? Nuclear fission is used in bomb making as well as the mass production of electrical energy, as discussed on my page. Fission is a highly controversial topic, as we can see today by examining the situation with North Korea and Iran. Iran claims to be developing nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, but the international community believes otherwise. 4. Is nuclear fission a natural occurance, or is it only synthetic? As I discussed in the decay sections of "Nuclear Fission," fission can also be spontaneous and natural. Many heavy elements emit alpha, beta, and positron particles in attempts to become more stable. Please see those aforementioned sections for more information. 5. Do all elements undergo decay? If not why do some decay and others do not? Not all elements undergo spontaneous decay, as not all elements are highly unstable, wishing to gain stability. Only those unstable isotopes of certain elements will undergo decay in the hopes of gaining more stability. 6. When people induce/use nuclear fission for things like making atomic bombs, is it possible for fission to continue occuring to the point where it's power can no longer be harnessed/controlled? Has this ever happened? Scientists who work for the military generally use just enough weapons-grade material to produce the desired effect. There are only so many nuclear chain reactions that can occur before no more material is left to fission. In the production of atomic bombs, scientists want an uncontrolled chain reaction to make the KABOOM. Scientists working at a power plant, however, want to control the reactions by inserting Boron or Cadmium neutron-absorbing tubes. 7. Hi, I was just wondering why exactly we dropped the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. By the way, great pictures. Thanks for the comment about the pics. There are a multitude of reasons we dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, including the reason Harry S. Truman thought it would be a quicker end to the war and that it would save millions of soldiers' lives. Truman probably also wanted to show the world the power of the US and assert that the US was a superpower to be reckoned with. 8. What is the next step for scientists in the "physical" world — i.e: technological advancements, or new bombs— is nuclear fission the most high tech procedure at the moment? To tell you the truth, I can't really give a complete answer- but I can tell you that there are always new discoveries being made that may or may not affect our way of life. There is such a thing as Nuclear Fusion, and that is easily researchable on the web, and is believed to be much more powerful than nuclear fission (in terms of bomb-making, see Hydrogen Bomb). I cannot tell you about new technologies really because that information is probably classified by the military. I encourage you to check it out though and tell me what you find. 9. Homeboy cheesedoodle, what's the radioactive isotope found in organic matter that's used to measure the age after it's quite dead, and what's the limit to how long it can be used, like an expiration date? - Alvaro Haha interesting name- I don't think I've ever been called that before. Anyway, in regards to your question the radioisotope is Carbon-14, which is found in small amounts in the human body. The "expiration date" is approximately 14,000 years. For more information you can visit my wikipage under the "half-Life" section and follow the links. 10. WUDDUP ZS. Not sure if you answered this and if you did Im still a little confused... what exactly are Fissile Isotopes? Do they have to do with nuclear fission? Zak ' A great website that answers your question is ' http://library.thinkquest.org/17940/texts/fission/fission.html Well I wish I had a question, but I think you covered it all! Great job!